Deforestation is clearing Earth's forests on a massive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year.
The world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation.
Forests are cut down for many reasons, but most of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families.The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock. Often many small farmers will each clear a few acres to feed their families by cutting down trees and burning them in a process known as “slash and burn” agriculture.
The exact rate at which rainforests are presently being destroyed is not known, as there have been no global assessments since 1990. At that time, an area of about 150.000 sq. Km of tropical rainforest, equivalent to the size of Great and Wales, was being destroyed every year. A similar area of forest was also being damaged or degraded. On average, the rate of destruction has increased during the last few years because of very extensive deliberate destruction of forests in Brazil and Indonesia.
Deforestation is clearing Earth's forests on a massive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year.
The world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation.Forests are cut down for many reasons, but most of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families.The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock. Often many small farmers will each clear a few acres to feed their families by cutting down trees and burning them in a process known as “slash and burn” agriculture.
The exact rate at which rainforests are presently being destroyed is not known, as there have been no global assessments since 1990. At that time, an area of about 150.000 sq. Km of tropical rainforest, equivalent to the size of Great and Wales, was being destroyed every year. A similar area of forest was also being damaged or degraded. On average, the rate of destruction has increased during the last few years because of very extensive deliberate destruction of forests in Brazil and Indonesia.